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I’ve updated the SD State Legislators list (available in the menu above) with the results from the leadership elections recently held.

I believe these results have already been reported by other political blogs in the state. But, for anyone that wants to know who was elected to legislative leadership positions, here are the results of the caucus meetings:

2017-2018 Senate Majority Leadership

If I understand the President Pro Tempore correctly, this is not actually elected until the full Senate is in session and the Democrats get their votes. It is unlikely to change though.

I was just reviewing the October and November SD LRC Registers and see there are a lot of executive appointments and reappointments Governor Daugaard had to make. These are listed in the November 7, November 14, and November 21 registers. In this post I will list the executive appointments/reappointments and add any additional information I may have about the appointee.

Looking at this list it reminds of just how many boards and commissions the the State of South Dakota has.

*** I should also note that many of these appointments actually appear to be reappointments that were improperly listed as appointments. Some of these I’ve noted a correction on, some I haven’t.

Darlene Bergeleen, Wessington Springs, was appointed on November 2, 2016, to the South Dakota Board of Nursing, to replace Teresa Disburg, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Bergeleen fills a RN position on the board.

Carla J. Borchardt, Sioux Falls, was appointed on November 2, 2016, to the South Dakota Board of Nursing, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Diedre Budahl, Rapid City, was appointed on November 3, 2016, to the South Dakota Board of Accountancy, to replace John Linn, Jr., effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Budahl fills a CPA position on this board. This board has been going after small businesses that use the word “accounting” or any form of it. They are definitely out of control, more on that in a different post some time in the future.

Jeff Strand, Sioux Falls, was appointed on November 3, 2016, to the South Dakota Board of Accountancy, to replace John Mitchell, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Richard Westra, Aberdeen, was appointed on November 3, 2016, to the State Banking Commission, to replace Arthur Russo, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Westra fills a State Bank position on the board.

Randy Brennick, Sturgis, was appointed on November 9, 2016, to the State Board of Funeral Service, to replace Susan Bentsen, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Matthew Christiansen, Mitchell, was appointed on November 9, 2016, to the Board of Examiners of Psychologists, to replace Dr. Bradley Woldt, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Trisha Miller, Rapid City, was appointed on November 9, 2016, to the Board of Examiners of Psychologists, to replace Dr. Magnavito, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Miskoo Petite, Sr., Okreek, was appointed on November 9, 2016, to the Council of Juvenile Services, to replace Judge Karen Jeffries, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Dr. Denette Eisnach, Pierre, was appointed on November 14, 2016, to the State Board of Examiners in Optometry, to replace Dr. Jill Hart, effective immediately and shall continue until June 30, 2019.

Hainje fills a Lay member position on the board. Lust shows up later in the post…

Dave Mickelson, Sioux Falls, was appointed on November 15, 2016, to the South Dakota Lottery Commission, to replace Robert Hartford, effective January 2, 2017, and shall continue until January 1, 2020.

Jean Murphy, Sioux Falls, was appointed on November 16, 2016, to the Workers’ Compensation Advisory Council, to replace Connie Halverson, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2018.

Dan Somsen, Yankton, was appointed on November 16, 2016, to the State Board of Pharmacy, to replace Jeff Nielsen, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

David Lust, District 34, was appointed on November 18, 2016, to the South Dakota House, to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Representative Dan Dryden, effective immediately.

This is technically the second time Lust has been appointed to replace Dryden. Dryden passed away earlier this year. At that time Governor Daugaard appointed Lust to fill out the remainder of Dryden’s term. Dryden died too late for a new candidate to be placed on the ballot. After Dryden won the election Daugaard then appointed Lust once again to serve Dryden’s newly elected term.

Executive Reappointments

Lynn D. Boadwine, Baltic, was reappointed on November 3, 2016, to the Animal Industry Board, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

Steven R. Rommereim, Alcester, was reappointed on November 3, 2016, to the Animal Industry Board, effective immediately and shall continue until October 30, 2019.

For the last couple of years I have been trying to provide coverage of every legislative committee meeting, every legislative bill, plus anything else I think the voters of SD should know about. I am very happy with the way my blogging has been received while covering the South Dakota legislature. Now, I must put this blog on the back-burner as a new writing opportunity has arisen which will keep me quite busy for the next year. Between this new project and my other two businesses I simply won’t have time devote to the legislature.

SoDakLiberty will continue, and I will do the occasional post for political matters I find interesting. This most likely won’t happen more than once or twice per week. I also plan to record various public events and posting them for people to see. My biggest objective on this blog has always to get more information out to people; and I believe recording certain events and sharing them on this blog is a great medium for doing so. If anyone in the Aberdeen area has a politically related event they want recorded and shared online let me know. It doesn’t even matter if I agree with you politically, I will share the event so people can discuss issues and know what others in the community believe.

Believe it or not I will very much miss covering every aspect of the legislative session. I do plan on once again covering the SD legislature, but that won’t happen for the 2017 session and likely won’t happen for the 2018 session either. I want to thank the readers of this blog for their support and look forward to continuing to blog about South Dakota politics, even if it is greatly reduced from what it was.

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As I continue to look at results from the 2016 South Dakota general election it is time to look at the State Senate races. I’ve updated the page I used to track the legislative general election races. I’ve also updated the SD State Legislators tab above to reflect the new office holders; yes, technically it is just under two months early, but I am gearing up for the 2017 legislative session already. The big story on the state Senate side is that Republicans picked up two seats and seemed to shift further to the right. There is also one race which has a possible recount.

Below is a brief recap of who won each general election State Senate seat, and maybe some comments if a race warrants it. This list does not include any State Senate races where there was not a general election opponent, those races were already recapped back in July. These results are all unofficial until the state canvassing board certifies them next week.

District 3 State Senate

District 3 unofficial State Senate results for the 2016 general election. Screenshot form SD SOS website.

This is a race that many expected to be much closer. Getting almost 40% of the vote as a newcomer is actually pretty good. But I do think this race was winnable for Heidelberger, or at least could have come much closer. I know both candidates, and have respect for both of them. Each of them has their good and bad policy standpoints in my opinion.

Looking a back I think Heidelberger was doing everything he could to get votes. Heidelberger was speaking to local groups about his candidacy and the ballot questions. He spent massive amounts of time going door to door. For a state legislative race he actually raised some pretty good funds. If Heidelberger had stuck to just these activities I believe this race would have been the tight race many expected. That may or may not have been enough to win, but it would have been close in my opinion.

Some will say the negative attack ads sent out by the SD GOP against Heidelberger tipped the balance towards Novstrup. Personally I don’t think the postcards did much, if anything. I believe what kept this from being a tight race is the same thing that caused Hillary Clinton to lose some support: social justice warriors. Heidelberger is a social justice warrior and is not afraid to use political correctness as a tool while blogging or speaking to groups. I believe this cost him a lot of votes. I’ve actually spoken with a handful of long-time Democrats in Aberdeen who were turned away from Heidelberger for often throwing out words such as bigoted, racists, misogynist, sexists, etc… Using those terms to label opponents does a great job of getting his base supporters excited, but it pushes people away who might have otherwise listened to his message. I think if the 2016 election proves anything it is that people on the whole are sick of political correctness being used to shut down discussions.

District 4 State Senate

District 4 unofficial State Senate results for the 2016 general election. Screenshot form SD SOS website.

This was another race I thought would be much closer. Both candidates have name recognition in the district and both candidates were out working hard. I’m not sure if the negative ads against Tyler gave Wiik the advantage, or if the voters of District 4 could relate to Wiik’s conservative message. Either way this was a big loss for the Democrats as this seat in the State Senate was flipped to the Republicans.

District 8 State Senate

District 8 unofficial State Senate results for the 2016 general election. Screenshot form SD SOS website.

This was an exciting race to watch on Tuesday night. The two candidates were going back and forth for first place as the precincts came in. And it ended within recount range. I haven’t heard yet if Parsley has asked for a recount. 94 votes is very close, but I’m not sure it is close enough for a recount to change the results. This is a hard loss for the Democrats in the State Senate. Going into this I thought Youngberg would get close, but didn’t really think he had a chance of unseating Parsley. This race does show incumbents can be defeated in South Dakota.

District 17 State Senate

District 17 unofficial State Senate results for the 2016 general election. Screenshot form SD SOS website.

This is a race I didn’t think would be close. But wow, this was a fun race to watch on Tuesday night. At times it looked as if Rusch could lose his seat. In then end Rusch gained back a good lead. But it was a pretty tough race for an incumbent. This might be a district to keep an eye on in the 2018 election.

Amendment T – legislative redistricting

Proponents of this amendment called it an anti-gerrymandering law. Republicans fought hard against this particular amendment. I personally supported the amendment, but I don’t think it would have done much to change the makeup of elected officials in Pierre.

Amendment T died pretty hard. A big part of the problem proponents had trying to get this amendment passed is the fact people don’t know, or generally care, how legislative redistricting is done. From an open government standpoint Amendment V was probably a good change, but in the end I don’t think it really matter whether it passed or not.

Amendment U – Prevent payday loan interest caps

Amendment U was created by the payday industry to protect itself from Initiated Measure 21 (which passed and caps payday loans at 36%). The important part of U would have placed in the SD Constitution that payday loan interest rates cannot be capped if there is a written contract. Of course all payday loans have written contracts.

U didn’t get defeated quite as soundly as I thought it would. But I do think the payday loan industry bringing U forward might have tipped the scale on IM 21 passing. Hopefully this is the last we see of this amendment.

Amendment V – Nonpartisan elections

Amendment V was touted as a way to have nonpartisan elections in South Dakota. I believe the original proponents of the amendment were doing so to help more Democrats get elected in South Dakota. At first I supported the measure, mostly because I am annoyed taxpayer dollars are being used to pay for private party elections. But I did change my mind and went against V. The main reason for going against V is that I believe it would have done the opposite of what proponents believe, and would have made it even harder for non-establishment candidates to even get to the general election.

Here are the unofficial results of Amendment V

Unofficial results of Amendment V. Screen shot form SD SOS website.

I actually thought this one would finish much closer than it did. But just like with Amendment T, proponents of the law have to take time to explain how the current system works before trying to sell the change in Amendment V. Plus of all the measures I think the Republican party fought the hardest against Amendment V.

Personally I would have preferred an Amendment to just get taxpayer dollars out of the primary election altogether. Let the parties fund their own partisan elections.

Initiated Measure 23 – Union dues for non-union members

I had a feeling IM 23 would be soundly defeated. It died even harder than I thought it would. Here are the unofficial results:

Unofficial results for IM 23. Screen shot from SD SOS website.

Almost 80% of the voters saying no sends a pretty sound message. I never thought SD would undo right-to-work by allowing unions to charge dues to non-members. Personally I see a lot of value in unions in certain cases; but it is up to those unions to provide value to their members and make the case that everyone should want to pay dues.

I was happy to see RL 19 fail. The original bill Secretary of State Shantel Krebs brought forth was a good one. There were a couple of tweaks that probably should have been made to make it a better law. But then the legislative process went awry and turned a good bill to streamline the petition process into a bill aimed at making it harder for people to run for office. Hopefully Secretary Krebs tries her original idea again; and more importantly, hopefully the legislature doesn’t destroy that idea once again.

Here are the unofficial results of RL 19:

Unofficial results for RL 19. Screen shot from SD SOS website.

RL 19 was a hard one to explain the mechanics of to voters. I think that fact alone meant the death of RL 19.

Referred Law 20 – Youth minimum wage

I never thought RL 20 would pass. When the voters set the minimum wage two years ago it included that increase for everyone. The legislature decided to exempt the youth from that minimum wage increase. In the end the voters decided the minimum wage increase should be applied equally to all workers.

Here are the final results for RL 20:

Unofficial results for RL 20. Screen shot from SD SOS website.

Actually the youth having a higher minimum wage may have helped some teenagers. Many people who hire temp labor during the summer for odd jobs will now just pay cash in the grey market. This leaves more money in the pocket of the teenager, while letting the person doing the hiring avoid having to file and pay wage earning taxes.

South Dakota voters had ten ballot questions to vote on this election cycle. The ballot questions which passed a majority vote were Amendment R, Amendment S, Initiated Measure 21, and Initiated Measure 22. In this post I will look briefly at those four ballot questions. The other six ballot measures I’ll cover in a post later today.

Amendment R – New governing board for the Tech Schools

Of all the ballot questions this was the hardest for me to call ahead of time. There really wasn’t any organized effort to stop this ballot question, but then at the same time the effort to pass it wasn’t that great either. Here is my post originally looking at Amendment R.

Before speaking about the amendment it is worth looking at the election results:

Election results for Amendment R on the South Dakota ballot. Screen shot from the SD SOS website.

Amendment R won, but just barely. Now that Amendment R is signed into law the legislature will have to decide what to do with this modification to the SD State Constitution.

Currently the SD State Constitution puts higher education under the Board of Regents, which manages the state’s Universities. But the Tech Schools are currently managed by local school boards. This has created a situation where many, including myself, believe the Tech Schools should have been placed under the Board of Regents. Another part of the current problem for the Tech Schools is funding. Since the Tech Schools fall under K-12, the Tech Schools feel they do not get a seat at the table during the budgetary process. And thus they feel like they are getting table scraps. That was a big part of the proponent push for Amendment, to allow the Tech Schools to get a seat at the budgetary table and grow the Tech Schools in a way that can compliment the workforce needs in South Dakota.

With Amendment R passed there is no longer a constitutional question about whether the Board of Regents should have control over the Tech Schools. It is now up to the legislature to decide what to do. The legislature may decide to create a new board to direct the Tech Schools; that is the most likely outcome. The big question there is how many resources (dollars) will be given to this board and will it be allowed to become as bloated as the Board of Regents. It is also possible the legislature could decide to place the Tech Schools under the Board of Regents and force that same Board of Regents to reorganize to accommodate this change. This second option is unlikely to happen. Perhaps the legislature will create a new board to direct the future of the Tech Schools, but still leave them under the Board of Education and share a budget with K-12 education.

No matter which solution the legislature comes up with I think the biggest question is how budgeting will work. How much money will be needed to implement whatever solution the legislature comes with? Will money be taken from the Department of Education or Board of Regents to help create this new future for the Tech Schools? Will the legislature have to look for new revenue streams to fund a new direction for the Tech Schools? Amendment R passing created just the first step in changing the direction of Tech Schools in South Dakota. It should be interesting following what happens with Tech Schools in the legislature.

I’m not really surprised by this. Voting to create constitutionally protected rights for crime victims sounds good. Just like with Amendment R, Amendment S really didn’t have any organized opposition. There are many, such as myself, who felt there might be some unintended consequences with Amendment S. But even that opposition was soft. It should be interesting to see how, if at all, the passage of Amendment S will impact the justice system in South Dakota. Even though I was opposed to Marsy’s Law, I truly hope it will do what proponents of the law say it will do. It is an issue I would be happy to say I was wrong on! Now the legislature needs to get to work ensuring codified law aligns with the provisions of this Constitutional Amendment.

Initiated Measure 21 – Cap payday loans at 36%

Final results of the IM 21 vote in South Dakota. Screen shot from SD SOS website.

With 75% of the people voting for IM 21 there was a strong message sent to the payday loan industry that people don’t like their current interest rates. IM 21 will cap the interest rates at 36%. IM 21 also has a provision to prevent payday lenders from trying disguise payday loans as something else in order to get around that 36% interest cap. The big question now is whether IM 21 will in fact kill the payday loan industry in South Dakota as many people believed. It is also worth watching to see if the industry finds a way around IM 21 to continue operating as normal in South Dakota. If the industry is not able to do so, I predict IM 21 passing will be a boon for the pawn industry.

Initiated Measure 22 – Campaign finance reform

Final results for IM 22 on the South Dakota ballot. Screen shot from SD SOS website.

IM 22 just barely passed. I actually thought this was going to fail, and still wish it would have. The title of the bill does sound good, who wants to be against revising campaign finance, holding lobbyists accountable, and creating an ethics commission. But that isn’t all there is to IM 22. Read my original post about IM 22 to learn more about it. I really though the “publicly funded campaign finance program” would kill this. Giving taxpayer dollars directly to politicians for campaigning just doesn’t seem like something I expected South Dakota voters to pass.

Now that IM 22 has been signed into law the legislature will have to find $12,000,000 during the budgetary process to appropriate towards “democracy credits”. That will be interesting to watch as the current fiscal year already has lower than expected revues. This is a topic I expect to blog more about as time goes on, so I’ll cut this post short…

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Earlier I did a brief post about Trump winning South Dakota. Now it is time to look at the other three statewide races in South Dakota. All three of these races are strong Republican wins. This is another post I’ll keep short; basically these races were quite boring…

At first I was surprised Thune didn’t top 75% of the vote. But perhaps his speaking against Trump crated some blowback and caused him to get just under 72% of the vote. All I can really say about this race is that at least Thune didn’t go unopposed, as he did six years ago. If any non-Republican is going to take a Senate seat in South Dakota they will have a better chance in 2020, when Senator Mike Rounds is up for reelection.

US Representative

Incumbent Republican Kristi Noem once again defended her seat from the Democrats. This time the Democrats had Paula Hawks on the ballot, who managed to get just over 35% of the vote.

US House results in the 2016 SD election. Screen shot from the SD SOS website.

I thought Hawks might get a few more percentage points to receive just under 40% of the vote. But for the most part I don’t think most of the state even cares about this race. That makes me wonder just how much support Noem will have if she does run for Governor in 2018…

Public Utilities Commissioner

Finally, the big winner of the night is Republican Chris Nelson to win his reelection for Public Utilities Commissioner. Nelson won the election by receiving just over 75% of the vote over Democrat challenger Henry Red Cloud.

Unofficial results for the PUC race in South Dakota. Screen shot from the SD SOS website.

Nelson winning so strong should be no surprise to anyone. Back during his tenure as Secretary of State Nelson was well liked. I also think Red Cloud may have hurt himself by stating his opposition to pipelines. That is a talking point that may get Red Cloud’s base excited, but not necessarily the state as a whole.